The shifting focus of maternal tutoring across different difficulty levels on a problem‐solving task

The present study extends research into maternal tutoring which employs concepts of a ‘zone of proximal development’ and ‘scaffolding’. It examines the effects of different difficulty levels of a jigsaw task on mothers' tutoring behaviour with their 3-year-old children. A zone of proximal development was established for individual children and a titration procedure used to explore shifts in tutor behaviour. The nature of scaffolding shifted across levels. Like cross-sectional studies children's puzzle-making became increasingly other-regulated with greater difficulty. Maternal teaching was most obvious and focused within the zone of proximal development.